April Fool's!
by azzazin
Summary: Twitch hates April Fool's, and it's all Bandit's fault.


On April Fool's, Twitch hates Bandit with an unhealthy amount of fervor.

She figures the reverse is true for the other 364 days of the year, since his crude electrical devices are big fat targets for her drone, and she supposes she can understand why all of the infuriating rascal's attentions focus upon her on the one day in the year practical jokes are socially permissible.

That doesn't mean she has to like it, or tolerate it. Over the years she deals with his numerous pranks - tasers wired to her room's door handle, pre-chewed bubble gum lining the floor of the simulation range to snag her drone, _all of her beloved cakes in Rainbow's mess hall mysteriously replaced with fucking baguettes_ \- with the aplomb and dignity expected of a proper lady. Sometimes, though, she retaliates, but only in the training room - where it is appropriate to do so.

Twitch is nothing if not proper.

She is also indisputably one of Rainbow's deadliest operators, and each April Fool's, after Bandit's pranks have stopped for the day, she makes sure to take it out on him. She holds down the trigger on his 'dead' body a _bit_ longer than absolutely necessary. She makes sure to hit just a _bit_ harder than she needs to when she swings her plastic K-BAR mockup at his sternum, knocking the wind out of him. She Tases him whenever possible, because she's tested the thing on herself in the name of science, and she knows from personal experience that it stings like hell for a minute.

It's a yearly game for the two of them, and the only thing keeping them going is the fact that both of them are far too stubborn to give up.

Except for this year, Twitch notes. There have been no doors booby-trapped with air horns, no glitter bomb in her desk, and the sugar in her cakes is actually that instead of salt. It's a pleasant surprise, and she resolves not to pick on him in training today. Preemptive strikes, after all, are not ladylike.

She realizes far too late that the game has changed entirely.

Today, Rainbow is doing some cross-training with GIGN's regular forces. It surprises absolutely nobody that Twitch is picked to lead the GIGN offensive team, and anyone with half a brain already foresaw the Bandit nomination for the mixed-nationality All-Star Rainbow squad, along with Mute, Ela, Smoke and Caveira. She might not get along with him personally, but she readily admits that he's at least as good an operator as she is.

The GIGN recruits bite the dust first, of course. They're good, well trained by anyone's standards, but they're not _Rainbow_ , and it shows as all of them 'die' thirty seconds into the round, leaving Twitch solo against five. She doesn't mind, this time; the point of the opening match is to demonstrate to the French special forces why they should respect and train with Rainbow. So she steps into the abandoned building ready to fight, and immediately runs into a pile of barbed wire, concealed in the darkness.

It's not a big deal, she thinks, and slams the butt of her rifle into the coils, breaking them up enough for her to untangle herself. Then she notices that the tingling in her legs isn't fading; it's getting stronger, and… itchier?

She glances closer at the wire and notices that it's covered with powder. Bringing her finger close to it causes it to itch too, and it's not a world-shattering deduction to conclude that the bundle of barbed wire has been dipped in itching powder.

Bandit. It had to be. She suppresses a snarl and ignores the sensation in her legs, as distracting as it is, instead choosing to focus on thoughts of sweet, sweet retribution. She bounds up the next set of stairs three at a time, and runs head-on into an Grzmot mine that sends her staggering. She forces herself to slow down, tosses out a Shock Drone, and begins to systematically clear out the area in front of her, taking down the remaining pair of Grzmots and a battery before a jammer knocks her drone offline. She throws out her second drone without hesitation and picks off the jammer before running into it again.

She notices that her other drone is gone - probably shot by someone nearby, possibly Bandit, and that means she's got a new target to hunt down. Her drone turns the corner, and despite herself she lets out a growl of outrage where nobody can hear her.

Bandit's picked up her other drone and is applying duct tape to it liberally, binding it to something she can't see clearly through the low-resolution camera on her drone. Her drone. Her _state of the art, bleeding edge tech_ drone, is currently being desecrated by a lowlife who thinks that gluing a taser to a car battery is a miracle of modern science. She drives the drone forward and zaps him, and the bastard has the temerity to laugh as he dances away from the painful electric shock.

So distracted is she by the itching, the lingering effects of Ela's mine, and the effort of controlling her drone to deliver some well-deserved pain that she never hears the hatch above her breaking.

The next thing she knows, she's being held down by Caveira, completely winded. The Brazilian smirks down at her. "Normally," she says, "I'd take my time having fun with you, but Bandit has offered some… payment for letting him do the job this time." She licks her lips, a gesture equal parts sensual and disturbing, and rises off of Twitch silently.

She lies there, unable to stand, and can only watch, dumbfounded, as her own drone drives slowly back into the room, carrying a large package duct-taped to the back of its frame. Only one thought crosses her mind: Bandit, somehow, has figured out how to hack her drone, and the thought depresses her more than anything else that has happened today. The German himself appears in the doorway, grinning unrepentantly, and pats her drone on its back. "Very nifty design," he comments cheerfully. "The taser doesn't really pack that much of a punch when you think about it, though, so I hope you like the modification I made. I think it'd be much more effective like this."

Twitch squints at her drone. The words ' _Zurück an den Absender_ ' have been scrawled on its front in black marker - German for 'Return to Sender', she knows. The package Bandit has attached is familiar, and she identifies it with a pang of horror as one of the improvised C4 explosives Rainbow uses to simulate actual terrorist IEDs. It too, has words written on it, this time in bold red text:

 _Achtung!_

 _Vorsicht vor dem Baguettemörder!_

 _Danger!_

 _Beware the Baguette-Slayer!_

Twitch's wordless cry of rage is drowned out by the sound of virtual-C4 detonating in her face.


End file.
